


End of My Rope

by r_lee



Category: Fairly Legal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-17
Updated: 2011-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/pseuds/r_lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm at the end of my rope here, so either fix the fray or let me hang myself."</p><p>A Justin Patrick character study. Spoilers through the end of Season One.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of My Rope

One, two, three, four times the ball bounces before he palms it, eyes the hoop, and shoots. Back to the foul line, three bounces this time, aim, shoot. He stays there after the game, practicing foul shots. Over and over, methodically, until the gym closes for the night. It still doesn't work the frustration out of his system, but at least he makes a couple nice shots. All net, they don't even kiss the rim.

Basketball is not his game. Baseball is and has been since he was a kid and that's why the jerseys hang in his apartment, but he was never good enough for it. Not good enough to get into a top-tier law school, never good enough for a big or prestigious law firm. So this is what happens to law students like him, they end up as ADAs, as prosecutors? Somewhere, some shrink is having a field day with that. Put people away because you can't best them any other way, abide by the letter and the intent of the law because that's what's on the books. See things in black and white because shades of gray are too complex and color's a whole different question and Kate, Kate is a whirlwind of unstable color masses colliding, never peacefully coexisting, creating new and divergent messes everywhere they go.

 _Justin, I'm pregnant._ That's one way to stop a man in his tracks, to cause not just a ripple in the... solace and order he'd finally carved out for himself but a whole earthquake. As much as he's not ready for the chaos of a child, Kate's _definitely_ not ready and in that space between the time she told him the news and retracted it, his life took bumpy turns: it flew by at odd and reckless angles. It rattled him right out of his seat, shook the foundations of the ground beneath him, and then, wham, just like that, _I was wrong._ It's not her fault and he knows that and in this issue there is no fault; it's not black and white. Matters of the heart rarely are and he knows that too.

But if she wasn't sure, why tell him? Was it a test? Did she want to see his reaction? Did she really expect him _not_ to react the way he did? They're still married -- that's not his choice but hers, she's the one who refuses to go through with the divorce -- but he would have given up the order and comfortable monotony of his life to stay with her. To build a family with her. It would have been his most difficult case to date, and they would have fought horrifically over the ins and outs of parenting, but he would have done it. He would have put it all aside for her, for them, because that was the right thing to do.

And now he doesn't have to. One more rug pulled out from under his feet, one more crazy ride, one more instance of Kate rushing into things before she has the relevant facts at hand. He walks home from the gym. It's not a smart thing to do in this city at this time of night, but these are his streets and he knows them and has known them since he was young and no one dares bother him. He probably has a _just try me_ look on his face, but no one approaches: no street people, no hookers, no pickpockets, no junkies. It's because he moves with purpose, or it would be most days. Really, he tells himself tonight, it's because he has nothing to lose.

He already lost it all. For a few precious hours he had... a child. A wife and a child, a family, a future so much bigger than himself. For a few precious hours after the panic settled, he was the happiest he's been in a long time. For a few precious hours he gave up his dogged pursuit of justice's knife edge, of right and wrong. Threw his coins in the fountain and watched them come up in all sorts of color combinations impossible to describe, beautiful and brilliant and complex, and then it all reverted to those same cutthroat shades of black and white. It's perfectly reasonable, he decides, to feel as if he's been kicked to the curb.

At home there are bills to be paid and mail to be read and phone calls to return and cases to study. The door opens onto a silent hush of tasteful decoration, of chrome and leather, of sports memorabilia placed just so, of a glass tabletop free of fingerprints or other smudges. His home is pristine and organized and he _likes_ it that way. He lived in chaos when he and Kate were together, and he survived it but never felt right in it. No, things are better this way. He's much better off. _Kate's_ much better off.

And that's exactly why he lets the phone ring without answering. It's late, after 11:30, and there's only one person it could be. From the austere and safe haven of his desk, case files open, a treatment in the works on his laptop, he listens as the answering machine picks up. _Justin, it's me. I just wanted to say..._

There's a lull and he fills in the gap for Kate: I’m sorry. She just wanted to say I’m sorry.

_...that things haven't exactly been easy for me either lately, and you need to know that._

"That's the wrong argument, Kate." The night air in his apartment doesn't make any reply, but he gets up and walks across the room and turns the volume off as her excuses fill the space on his answering machine. Tonight, he's not in the mood for the chaos that clings to her like a vine to its tree. Tonight, he needs things to be simple and straightforward and black-and-white. Tonight he needs guilty or innocent, punishable or legitimate, honest or corrupt. Tonight he needs to look at things the only way he really can: objectively, earnestly, but not dispassionately. He _has_ a heart, and he's not made of tin.

It's a shame Kate can't see that. She's too busy being distracted by the next fascinating thing and that's the one thing he can never, ever be: more colorful than he is.


End file.
